The Coming Lispector Tidal Wave

I have the feeling that years of hard work and dedication are about to pay off in a very, very big way, as we approach the publication of Clarice Lispector’s Complete Stories. See the front page review in The New York Times (the first time a Brazilian’s been so honored, so I’m told) and gushing praise in The New Republic. And that’s just the start.

(As an incidental note, I’m hoping to add my voice to the mix in September, if my priorities will allow it.)

This is really the story of many people working selflessly for a common goal, along them some remarkable translators, a legendary publisher and her staff, and, most of all, the impassioned Benjamin Moser, who got the resurgence of Lispector off the ground with his biography, Why This World, and kept things going with a re-translation of what many consider her masterpiece, and then spearheaded re-translations of four more essential Lispectors. And now this, the years-long work of translator Katrina Dodson (with Moser again providing must help and guidance).

And the wonderful thing is that few authors would be so worthy of this treatment. Lispector is genuinely original, and her work is so genuinely weird and against-the-grain that she would need champions to get her right in translation and make people pay attention.

CR is dedicated to thoughtful, in-depth criticism without regard to what's commercially appealing. It takes tens of hours each month to provide this. Please help make this sort of writing sustainable, either with a subscription or a one-time donation. Thank you!

I am so excited for this book that I can hardly express it. My first Lispector was “The Passion According to G.H.” when it was released a few years back under the Moser tidal wave. What an experience! I then read “The Hour of the Star” and “Agua Viva” on successive nights. I urged a dear friend of mine who lives many miles away, and who shares with me a real passion for literature in translation, to read “G.H.” She promptly went out and bought a copy and read it in one night. The next day she wrote me that it is “quite possibly the most disturbing, mind-altering book I have ever read,” and she said with a real sense of awe and terror. We’ve traded e-mails about Lispector since then. I’ve re-read “G.H.” and “Agua Viva” twice each since…I think my friend considers “G.H.” one of the most powerful reading experiences she’s had, but also seems almost averse to reading more of her work–in the best possible way (if that makes any sense). At any rate, I’m glad to see you continuing to post about her work (here and through the QC)…up with Lispector! She, along Krasznahorkai, Bernhard, and Hrabal, has become one of my very favorite authors.

Definitely a groundswell, similar to that bringing Krasznahorkai to readers a couple of years back. Still, I do wonder how widespread the phenomenon is outside the usual literature in translation aficionados…